


An Eden of Flesh and Steel

by Nightelfbane



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Planet, Artificial Intelligence, Cybernetics, Cyberpunk, Cyborgs, F/M, Fluff, Genetic Engineering, Genetically Engineered Beings, Holography, Nanotechnology, Prosthetics, Romantic Fluff, Science Fiction, Transhumanism, human augmentation, post-singularity society
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 09:22:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11666256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightelfbane/pseuds/Nightelfbane
Summary: A day in the life of a post-singularity society.





	An Eden of Flesh and Steel

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are greatly appreciated!

            Annarielle stepped out from under the green Thyrian sky and into the enormous Salvation Arcology, a tower reaching over a kilometer into the sky. Housing over 100,000 people, it was the 5th largest arcology in the city, which itself contained almost one billion. Salvation had gardens, pools, simcenters, restaurants, bars, bodyshops, and more. Annarielle was interested in the gyms.

            Salvation had six Skyways, arranged in a hexagonal pattern. They were zero gravity tubes spanning the height of the arcology. They were used as fast passageways along the length of the arcology. Residents and visitors could climb the walls, a feat made possible by well-placed hand and footholds and the lack of gravity. They could also pay to take a small, fast moving lift that floated near the center of the skyway. Many people chose neither, instead ascending or descending on hoverboards or Cavorite SloFall nodes.

            Annarielle spotted one such person. The man was floating downwards as green holographic wings flapped behind him. They were scaled, with a white membrane stretched between long fingers. The wings were purely decorative. His flight was powered by Cavorite SloFall nodes embedded in his shoulders, arms, legs, and abdomen.

            Others, like Annarielle, ascended on their own personal hoverboards. As she stepped into the skyway, the familiar weightlessness of artificial zero gravity came over her, and she floated free of the ground. She grabbed the wall to her left and pulled herself out of the way of the traffic around the door. Her hoverboard was attached to a magnetic strip under the skin on her back in its compact form. As she pulled it off her back, it unfolded into a shape about as long and wide as an ancient Terran surfboard. She pressed her palm to a panel on the board’s surface, and the device hummed to life. Green light came to life in circuitry patterns on its flat surface.

            The board, as it activated, became part of her. It linked to the implants in her brain she had had since she was a year old, becoming as intimate and familiar as a limb. It was no longer a piece of equipment, but an extension of her will. It hovered at waist height, and she swung her leg over it and sat. She moved closer to the center of the Skyway, out of the way of taxis and climbing pedestrians. She started her ascent, floating to the left or right to avoid others as needed. Motion sensor implants in her brain gave her knowledge of objects in her vicinity without her having to turn her head to see them.

            The Skyway was abuzz with activity. As she rose, she saw children playing in the zero gravity, launching themselves up and down the walls in a game of tag. They threw colorful balls with SloFall nodes at their centers, controlling them with their implants the same way Annarielle controlled her board. Holographic advertisements spilled neon light across the curved walls. Merchants tended floating stalls near the edge of the Skyway, serving food and drink and counting credits. Due to how messy food and liquids could get in zero g, everything had to be sealed and not opened before you left the Skyway. Still, the Skyways were as busy as the regular streets outside. Scrubber bots worked day and night to keep the place clean.

            Annarielle didn’t stop at any of the stalls. Instead she set her sights to an exit almost 3/4ths of the way up the arcology. She increased her speed as she went. 750 meters was a _long_ way up, hence the use of Skyways instead of elevators or stairs.

            She turned off her board with a thought and floated into the exit, dismounting her board and settling gently to the ground as the gravity gradually increased. She stowed the board on her back and merged with the crowd in the corridor. The corridors were more like streets than halls, with far walls and high ceilings. More shops and restaurants lined the walls, and the street was bustling with people as they went on with their business. Some people chose to fly over the traffic, on boards or wings. Annarielle decided to walk today. Her boyfriend teased her that she used her board so much that she’d forget how to use her legs.     

            She maneuvered through the crowd and made her way to a storefront on the left of the corridor. Holographic men, women, and other less describable beings posed to the sides of the entrance, all of them in peak physical condition. She walked through the automatic doors and into the reception area of the Salvation Sky Gym going past the registration terminal to a second set of doors set in between two others. The doors, she knew, scanned her, making sure she was a registered member of the gym and that she had SloFall nodes installed. When they verified this, they allowed her to enter the changing room. She was already dressed for her exercise so she continued to another door on the far side, putting on the goggles that were hanging around her neck. She tapped the control to open the door and strode through.

            Annarielle was standing on the edge of the “plank” that was the entrance to the obstacle course that was Salvation Sky’s main attraction. The gym had standard weight lifting and gymnastics sections, but the obstacle course was the main attraction. It was a circle of floating blocks, tubes, bars, and other objects designed to force people to leap, crawl, and run. She could see people doing just that on the course. Occasionally one fell, but engaged their SloFall nodes. Far below, hovercars raced by at dizzying speeds. They had a minimum and maximum height they had to fly at, leaving the skies clear for people like Annarielle. If she were to fall into their traffic, she would be reduced to a fine mist before she hit the ground. That’s why people who wanted to run the course were required to have SloFall nodes.

  Annarielle jumped off the plank. Her board fell with her, firmly magnetized to the palm of her right hand. She passed the obstacle course and continued falling. Her board was in passive mode, so she switched it to active. The board stopped falling immediately, and she swung under, over, and onto the board, legs hanging off on either side. She laughed with exhilaration and jumped to her feet. The soles of her boots magnetized to the board. She would not fall off unless she disengaged the magnets or her feet were severed at the ankles.

            Annarielle looked above her to the course that floated close to the side of Salvation. Pieces of it shifted randomly, sliding unexpectedly to surprise the runners and fliers. She could still see them running across various terrains, jumping over gaps, through hoops, and around each other. She floated up to join them.

            Runners navigated the course purely on foot, while fliers flew past the obstacles. Boarders like Annarielle went in between. Some of them only flew; others augmented their running with the board. Annarielle did both, depending on her mood. Today, she felt like running. She rose above the course and jumped onto it. She hit the course running and two timers appeared in her in-head display. One started counting up from zero, the other remained static at four minutes and thirteen seconds. On an entire course consisting of grey blocks that shifted, split, merged, and generally tried to slow you down, 4:13 was an impressive time indeed. In fact, Annarielle’s name was quite high on the gym’s list of fastest completion times. However, she wanted the time down to four minutes or under by next month.

            She pounded down grey steps, skipping the last three that held a slight shimmer that indicated them to be holographic. Her foot would pass through them and she would fall. The next section was suspiciously flat, but was not holographic. As she started across it, two rectangular blocks separated from the sides and floated away. Annarielle was suddenly walking a tightrope.

            Her board hovered nearby, keeping pace with her. She lost sight of it when she had to leap into a small tube to continue. The light was suppressed in the tube, leaving her in darkness. She still knew where the board was, though, the same way she knew where her hands or feet were when her eyes were closed. She knew it would be there when her hand left the artificial shadow of the tube. Her palm magnetized to the board and it pulled her the rest of the way out of the tube. She placed her feet back on it and entered a section of the course designed specifically for fliers. It had no grounds for running, only grey blocks that fliers had to dodge at high speeds. Runners were forced to jump from block to block, often finding that their destination had moved while they were midair. Accidents were often, which was why nobody was permitted entry without Cavorite SloFall nodes.

            She dodged a block that shifted into her path, crouching low on the board with both hands and feet magnetized to it. Another block moved in front of her and she spun under it. While she was upside down she spotted another block moving up below her. She swerved to the left as she righted herself, avoiding a long block that spun lazily.

            Annarielle left the flier section, jumping onto a path littered with blocky rises, dips, and gaps. She leaped and bounded, dodging holograms and gaps with ease. Artificial respirocytes in her blood carried oxygen and carbon dioxide far more efficiently than organic cells. They allowed her muscles to function far longer than a vanilla human’s. She came to a gap too wide for her to cross. She jumped anyway, landing on her board in the middle, then jumping again to the other side. She continued running the course until she came to a large gap bridged by small stepping stones. She didn’t hesitate, but leaped onto the first stone, then quickly hopping to the next. She got about halfway across the stepping stones before they all flew out from under her.

            She plummeted off the course, spinning head over heels before righting herself. She fell facing down, feeling the wind rushing past her ears and whipping her hair into a frenzy. She relaxed awhile, watching the deadly hovercars approach. Somebody of a few centuries ago might have been panicking, but Annarielle’s board was close above her. Unfortunately, her four minute record was not. She dismissed the timers from her in-head display and brought her board over to her. She settled onto it and gradually slowed her fall.

            Most people who had SloFall nodes installed had the full powered versions installed; they could fly instead of just fall slowly. Boarders like Annarielle tended to get the cheaper versions that just slowed their fall, while they relied on their boards for flight.

            Annarielle checked the time and decided to cut her exercise short. She was going to be late as it was. She flew to the exit and hurried back out to the corridors of Salvation. Because she was running late, she stayed on the board and flew over the crowds.

            The Garden of Lights and Dreams was a domed platform less than halfway up the Salvation Arcology. More of a jungle than a garden, it was a popular place for romantic walks and dinners. Annarielle raced down the Skyway and met Josiah at the doors to the Garden. He was wearing a four-armed suit, reminding Annarielle with a flash of embarrassment that she was still in her gym clothes. She navigated her IHD until she came to a section labelled CLOTHES. She hopped off the board as she selected the dress she had planned for the evening. Her clothes shifted around her as they morphed from gym clothes to a dark green dress. A silver serpent wound its way up her skirt and down her right arm.

            Josiah took her right hand in his mechanical left and smiled at her. “You look beautiful, Annie.” His organic left arm went over her shoulders and pulled her close as they entered the Garden.

            Josiah was somewhat of a bodyshop regular. He was darkskinned with golden eyes and slit pupils, like a snake’s. Annarielle knew the eyes were modified with extra cones, giving him a more colorful view of the world than someone with unaugmented eyes. He had two mechanical arms grafted onto his torso under his flesh and bone arms. Mechanical prosthetics were cheaper than the genetic therapies and extensive surgeries required for biological prosthetics. Josiah also liked simulation programs, much as Annarielle liked her board. She teased him that he’d spent so much time hooked up to a sim that he’d forgotten how to use his brain.

            They walked arm in arm into the Garden of Lights and Dreams. The outer rim of the Garden was the dinner area. The rest was a wild jungle / garden with pathways winding through it. The top of the dome was a holographic projection of a sky in the middle of a glorious purple sunset. Two white moons reminiscent of old Earth’s hung in the sky, surrounded by stars. One was a crescent, the other was full. They stared openmouthed at the sky as they were guided to a table by one of the clockwork waiters, one of the Garden’s more unusual features. The waiters were controlled by independent artificial intelligences being paid to do so.

The tables and chairs were grown from the roots of the trees on the edge of the garden. They took their seats and ordered. The ticking automaton (a robotic interior covered by the decorative clockwork exterior) left to get their food and drinks, ticking musically as it went. Josiah looked at Annarielle. “An actual wait staff with actual kitchens. How quaint.” Eventually the waiter returned with their food and drinks. Annarielle had ordered a steak and Josiah had gotten a soup made from extraterrestrial ingredients.

They chatted as they ate. Josiah was considering an animated tattoo and Annarielle was trying to talk him out of it. He was enamored with body modification, and she suspected he would be amenable to abandoning the human form entirely. Annarielle liked to stay close to home. Besides the brain and hand implants that allowed her to interface with modern technology and in exist in society, she had a minimum of modifications. She had her hoverboard and SloFall nodes, and she was content.

They finished dinner and took a walk into the jungle. There were numerous cobblestone pathways through the strange fantasy jungle, intersecting and curling around into small groves. Moonbeams pierced the branches above and strange lights danced around the trunks off the path.  It was their first time in the Garden and they were awestruck at the ethereality of it all. Eventually they came to the branches of a large tree with glowing white tendrils hanging to the ground. The light shined on their faces as they brushed past the tendrils to see what was on the other side.

The clearing under the tree was well lit by the tendrils. They could see a stone bench at the base of the tree, which they sat in. Josiah took her hand in both of his organic ones. The implants in their hands linked, connecting her brains and allowing them to share information. They couldn’t hear each other’s thoughts or feel the other’s emotions, but they could share memories. It was more than sharing simple audio or visual files. The memory was transferred through their artificial implants but was sent from and stored in the organic parts of their brains.

When Annarielle sent Josiah a memory from a week ago of a concert he had wanted to go to, he could feel the music pulsing in his chest and the pain in his legs as he danced through the wildly shifting crowd. Annarielle could see his eyes glaze over as his brain began processing the new memory. She knew he would be experiencing a darkened hall lit only by dancing neon holograms and flashing lights that pulsed to the beat of the music. His skin would be slick with sweat in the hot, humid air. Some of the people in the crowd he was dancing through had altered their bodies like him. Some of them had modified their body so much they no longer appeared human. There were androids that bared only a token resemblance to the human form. Some of the people had changed their bodies to the likenesses of animals or aliens, or creatures from fantasy. Others he didn’t recognize at all.

Josiah’s eyes cleared as his brain finished processing the new memory. He smiled and kissed Annarielle as he sent her a memory of his own. This time, it was her eyes that glazed over as she received the memory.

She was in one of his simulation programs. She was in space, in a custom EVA suit instead of a ship. The suit was sterile white and fit closely over her body, unlike the bulky spacesuits of a few centuries earlier. She activated the suit’s thrusters on the ankles and wrists and began soaring over the icy rings of a nearby gas giant. A small star burned quietly in the distance, its cold light glittering over the shards of ice that made up the rings.

She was seeing the universe through Josiah’s golden, slit-pupiled eyes. The gas giant was green, streaked through with some _other_ color, only perceivable with Josiah’s augmented eyes. She reached down with her gloved hand and trailed her hand in the ice, sending up a spray of ice shards in her wake.

She veered away from the gas giant and its rings, heading into empty space. She flew into the space between worlds, using her thrusters to slow to a stop. The gas giant was much smaller behind her than it was when she was soaring over its rings. She couldn’t see the numerous moons that orbited it anymore. She took a deep breath and raised her hands. She thumbed the release on her helmet and let it drift away.

She didn’t die. The air was not ripped violently from her lungs. It was, after all, only a simulation.

As Josiah breathed in hard vacuum, Annarielle was struck with a deep sense of loneliness. She had never been agoraphobic, but the universe was so vast. The stars stretched out, infinite in number and possibilities. Parts of her brain not processing Josiah’s memory began to become panicked. Her own sensory reactions began overriding Josiah’s, and she began to feel cold, so very cold…

The memory ended and she woke with all four of Josiah’s arms wrapped around her. She started and gasped as she came to, almost ripping herself out of his embrace.

“Annie? What’s wrong?”

She shook her head and snuggled back into him, grateful for the warmth of his embrace and for the beauty of the Garden after her agoraphobic episode. She gazed into the branches of the luminescent tree as she spoke. “I didn’t like that memory at all.”

“Wha-? Why? I figured you’d love flying in space.”

“There’s no gravity in space. It was also…empty. Just lots of nothingness.”

“Oh…sorry. Want a different one?”

“No, just hold me for a while.”

She closed her eyes and rested her head against his chest, breathing in his scent mixed with the perfume of the jungle. Soon, they would have to stand and leave the Garden and return to their ordinary lives, but for now they took pleasure in each other’s company, cuddling under the magical sky of the Garden.


End file.
